Assaf Karmon built a bidding marketplace for STR cleaners

Quick Summary

Assaf was hosting in Honolulu in 2016. He'd text a cleaner about a Tuesday checkout, hear nothing, text a second, and then both would say yes. Then the guest would move checkout to Wednesday and he'd start the whole thing over.

He built the scheduling app first and added the marketplace in 2018. You post a project, cleaners in your area bid, and you pick on price plus the reviews and completed project counts attached to each one. Cleaning costs eat into thin margins, so know what a market earns before you budget them. BNBCalc Markets covers the revenue side.

Key Points

• He was hosting on Airbnb in Honolulu in 2016, back when he says it was a thriving STR market. He'd text a cleaner two weeks out about a Tuesday checkout, get silence, line up a second cleaner who'd say yes, and then the first would accept too. The guest would move checkout to Wednesday and it all started again.
• The Delaware Corp went in at the end of 2016 and 2017 went to building the MVP, all while he was doing his MBA in Hawaii. He made the app free at first, and maybe a year later the first paying customer showed up. He says the first revenue Turno ever registered, end of 2017, was "like thirty five cents or something like that".
• It was called TurnoverBnB back then and only handled scheduling and turnover management. The marketplace came in 2018, borrowed from a pickup truck marketplace he'd been involved with, and he says that's the piece that took off. He wouldn't give Jeremy host or cleaner counts, only millions of projects a year.
• Post a project and every cleaner in that area gets notified with the basics, his example being seven turns a month on a three bedroom, two bathroom. Offers come back at five, 10 or 20 depending on the area, and you judge them on price, the reviews other hosts left, the cleaning score guests leave inside their Airbnb review, and how many projects that cleaner has finished on Turno.
• What makes a cleaner competitive is volume plus a clean review record. Thousands of projects and hundreds of positive reviews push a bid to the top of the page and let that cleaner charge a little more, while someone new comes in lower. Assaf says he queried the database for cleaners who'd grossed over $200,000, got a very, very long list, and found one almost at a million dollars. Those top cleaners usually run small teams.
• A bid isn't the final price. Jeremy's seven bedroom gets bid at $400 because the cleaner can't see there are two washers and dryers, so the job runs shorter than they assumed. Assaf's answer is to message them, explain, and ask if they'd come down, since the platform can't capture everything perfectly.
• His pro tip for hosts is bonuses. Whenever you get a five star review, especially a cleaning one, hand your cleaner $20, or $25, or $50 depending on the property and your budget. He's a big believer in incentives, which is also his fix for cleaners who skip the photos. Pay them through Turno and the project won't close until the pictures are uploaded.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: We are live with the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. I'm here today with my guy, Assaf, who is a founder of a really exciting company in the short-term rental space, one that I personally use. I use at multiple different properties in multiple different locations. So I'm really excited to have him on today. Assaf, thank you so much for joining.

Assaf: Thanks, Jeremy. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Jeremy: So Assaf is founder of Turno, and what they do, and if I butcher any of this, I want you to correct me, is they help make the process of finding short-term rental cleaners as easy as possible. I'm sure you've probably heard this or said this before, but frankly, you guys are kind of like the Airbnb of Airbnb cleaners. They're kind of funky where you go in, you can see the cleaner's reviews. So you can select a cleaner based off the comments of hosts and their reviews, the same way that if you're selecting a house, you check its reviews out. So in many ways, they've made it about as easy as possible to find reliable and trusted cleaning help.

So Assaf, yeah, tell us about the platform and what got you into doing this.

Assaf: Thanks for the intro, Jeremy. So everything you said is true, but after you find your cleaner on Turno, we also help you manage that cleaner going forward. Every time you get a reservation, we automatically create a project for your cleaner. You can create checklists. They can work against those checklists, upload pictures, give an in-app chat. They can report problems. They can automatically get paid through Turno. We handle their taxes. So it really is hands-off and kind of gives you back a lot of that time that you're putting into this.

Jeremy: So, first of all, when did you guys start? I think I've probably been using y'all since 2021 or 2020. Where did this idea come from, and when?

Assaf: So I was hosting on Airbnb. It was 2016. It was kind of low, still kind of early in the game, and having the hardest time managing cleaners.

Imagine I get a reservation, the checkout is on Tuesday, it's like two weeks before the reservation. I text my cleaner, hey, in two weeks from now, can you come on Tuesday? And then silence. Oh man, I don't know if she's going to do it, not going to do it. Let me call this other girl I'm working with, hey, can you come on Tuesday? And then they're like, oh yeah, sure, I'll come Tuesday. And then the first one responds, sure, I'll come Tuesday. Like, ah, sorry, I already gave to someone else. And then what do you know? The next day the guest changes the reservation and now checkout is on Wednesday. And then you have to go through all this again and again and again.

You don't know when, what, if they're going to do it. You don't know when they started, when they finished, how they did it. It was just too much stress. Honestly, it was more than the time, it was just the stress and the uncertainty that was taking what I thought was a passive investment and making it into a source of stress and anxiety. And that's what we don't like in the short-term rental world is stress and anxiety. That's what we want to minimize.

Jeremy: So you had this problem. Hey, this is a problem that I think is a massive problem. A problem at scale.

Before we went live, we were kind of going back and forth about startup stuff, and further doing a partnership with BNBCalc, which I'll dive into a little bit, but they've got some cool API stuff going on. So we're going to try to see how we can integrate them into our property analysis and where people can estimate cleaning costs more based off what cleaners are actually charging in that area, which is really cool. But I digress.

So yeah, this was a problem you had, but when was it like, hey, I'm not the only one, and I'm going to go out and I'm going to solve this for everybody?

Assaf: So at the time, I'm a software engineer, so I'm building apps. I know what I'm doing, so I'm like, oh, I'll just build a little app. How hard could that be?

Jeremy: If you guys weren't watching this, he is in Honolulu, Hawaii. I should have asked. So he's coding apparently, but it seems like based off his pigmentation, they're also enjoying the beach a little bit too.

Assaf: Correctly, yeah. Honolulu. At the time, it was a really great, thriving STR market, not so much now because of regulation. And I just built an app. I made it free for people to use, got a lot of feedback, and realized there was an opportunity there. And maybe a year later, got our first paying customer.

Jeremy: So it was a lot of work, a lot of upfront work to get this going. But it seems like it's a common problem for a lot of people, super stressful to do this on your own. You really shouldn't be doing this on your own.

Assaf: If you have just one property and you're listening, just so you know, Turno is completely free. If you have one property, even if you have your existing cleaners, you can invite them to Turno and you can work with them on Turno and save all this anxiety and stress that goes along with managing turnovers.

Jeremy: Okay, so you saw the problem set. You created an MVP. I'm assuming you started in one local market. You didn't try to serve the entire world initially. Did you just serve Hawaii initially, or what? How did that work? How did you get that first customer?

Assaf: Initially, it was not a marketplace. Initially, it was just an app to manage short-term rental turnovers. That's what it was. That's why it's called Turno. So our original name was TurnoverBnB, kind of like BNBCalc, very descriptive name that exactly describes what you're doing. Not more, not less. And it was just a tool to manage the process. It was only later that we've added the marketplace component, which really took off and made Turno very unique.

Jeremy: So when we were talking offline, you mentioned going to investors initially and telling them how big of a market this was. When you had that first customer, is that when you went out to investors and you were like, hey, I think we're onto something here, it's really challenging to manage these turnovers? Or when did, I guess, when did you scale from one, and what was like the instrumental aspects for turning this into a legit business?

Assaf: So one customer really wasn't when you go to an investor.

Jeremy: Totally.

Assaf: And to be honest, I'm a product guy. I like building things, solving problems. But raising funds isn't my forte. I don't really have it in me to exaggerate and kind of like, Turno is the next Amazon. I don't have it in me to exaggerate. I'm like, yeah, here, this is the story, this is the numbers, this is what we're doing. Do you like it? I'm a smart guy. We can build, it's not going to cost us a million dollars a month to build our tech out. We'll build it, we'll figure it out.

So for us, first there was success. Then there was fundraising. We were growing really well, we were hitting really good numbers, and we were actually getting inbound requests from investors, like, oh, I'm seeing the app, I have friends who are using it, what's the deal? What's the story? Can we talk? It wasn't us going knocking on doors saying, hey, do you want to invest? Which is a lot easier. People come to you, it's a lot easier than when you go to them. And so for us, we built a good product. People were using it, talking about it. And then people came knocking, and it was a lot easier.

Jeremy: Got it. So 2016, 2017 was building that MVP. Can you just walk us through the timeline? I know we don't have too much time to give seven, eight years of history all that it deserves. But walk us through your journey, your product journey, your company, your team, 2016 to today.

Assaf: End of 2016, the idea is planted and we register our Delaware Corp. 2017, building, experimenting with MVP, launching a product that helps just with the management and the scheduling. End of 2017, I think we registered our first revenue, it's like thirty five cents or something like that.

Jeremy: And you were W2 at this time. Were you eating top ramen and tofu?

Assaf: So I was, I'm in business school. I'm in Hawaii business school. So University of Hawaii, Schuyler College of Business. I'm doing my MBA. Also, my co-founder, Tim, is with me with the MBA program.

Jeremy: Gotcha. And yeah, don't mind my, most people are listening here. So guys, for you watching, my camera for whatever reason went out. But we're going to keep rolling here.

So you're in business school, you're getting your MBA, and then this at the same time.

Assaf: When you are in your MBA, what is your biggest cost?

Jeremy: Your time, I'm assuming. Or your opportunity cost, but you're not working.

Assaf: So for me, it's a great time. I'm doing my MBA, I'm also going to work on this business at the same time, kind of making sure that if I'm going to spend time away from work, that I'm going to make it valuable, getting my [inaudible].

Jeremy: Take a risk, I'm assuming that there's kind of more of a risk or so. Okay, so you did this while in business school. And then I guess, was there a point when you were done with business school where you're like, I have to decide if I want to do this full time or if I go get a job?

Assaf: Exactly. So I graduated business school. I keep working on it. I was also consulting and kind of doing side projects just to keep the lights on. And then as revenue becomes a little more substantial, then I go full time. And then once we had more investor money coming in, it was usually small investments at the time. So it wasn't like one of those Bay Area kind of fifty million dollar checks you get. We were doing it the hard way. And it was slow going initially, but you pick up momentum as you go.

Jeremy: Got it. And that momentum, I guess, can you share the metrics? What metrics can you share? How many cleaners, or how many hosts do you have on board? Just give me some numbers.

Assaf: Let me give you some numbers. I'm not going to give you exactly what you asked for.

Jeremy: It's okay. I don't ever get exactly what I asked for. So it's fine.

Assaf: But we are doing millions of projects a year. So millions of guest turnovers per year.

Jeremy: Millions. Okay, so millions a year. And then how does it, so if I'm a cleaner or I'm a host, how do I do it? I guess I want to hear both sides. I don't think many cleaners listen to this podcast.

Assaf: You do.

Jeremy: I, you should. Yeah, exactly. You're in the right place, because I've got something for you.

So let's start with the host first, and then walk us through what that journey looks like. I'm a fictional host. Let's say my name is Jeremy. I live in Brooklyn, got a couple of properties in New York, a couple in Vermont, a couple in North Carolina, or just one. So I go to Turno, I connect my Airbnb account, or if I have a PMS, I connect that PMS.

Assaf: So now Turno knows about your reservations. You go ahead, you invite the cleaners you already are working with. And then every time you get a reservation, we send your cleaners, hey, you got a cleaning project on this day or this date. And these are the things you have to do based on the checklist that Jeremy created.

When it's time to clean, they use their mobile app. They say, okay, I'm starting this clean. I'm following this checklist. I'm uploading these pictures. I see a problem. I click on a report a problem button. I let Jeremy know that the water heater is not working, that the Wi-Fi is not working, all these problems. Hopefully none of them. The things that give us anxiety.

So you're always in the know, right? You know when they started, when they finished. We automatically pay them. We debit your account, we pay them. At the end of the year, we issue a 1099. It's really super easy for you, Jeremy.

And then let's say that you add a new property and you need to find a cleaner. So you go into our find a cleaner section, our marketplace, and do a search. And then all those cleaners in that area get notified. Hey, there's an opportunity to work with Jeremy. He has a property in this address. He does about seven turns every month. It's three bedroom, two bathroom. And then they give you their best price. You get a list of, it really depends on the area, five offers, 10 offers, 20 offers.

And then you can judge which one works best for you in terms of the price, obviously, is important. Then also the reviews that other hosts in the area have left those cleaners, and the guests, right? So when someone checks out of Airbnb, they leave a cleaning review in their general review. So if they gave the cleaner a five star review, four star review, that's important. So you know how guests like them, how hosts like them, and how many projects have they done on Turno.

Jeremy: Got it. Two questions. So when did the marketplace come? Because in this podcast, we're trying to help short-term rental hosts. But I admittedly have kind of a startup fascination. So I'm curious, when did it come from managing turnover? So those pictures you said, any reports on issues that may have happened. So when did it kind of go from that? Because I'm not familiar with, I mean, that's a feature, but I'm familiar more with the marketplace. So when did that aspect come?

Assaf: Right, so first it was a management app, then it turned into a marketplace. It was fairly early on. It was 2018. And the idea came to me because I was consulting on, not consulting, I was actually pretty heavily involved with this other project that was a marketplace for pickup trucks.

So if you had a heavy item to move, let's say you bought a new living room set in Costco. And, well, how am I going to put this living room set in my Volkswagen Golf? It just doesn't fit, right? How am I going to get it home? So you can either call a moving company or whatever, or you can go on this app and you can get a pickup truck to come and take this thing, bring it to your home, and then you pay them by the minute. Really great app. I should check it out if it's in your ear. It's called GoShare.

Jeremy: Wait, so you're telling me you've got two startups and companies going at the same time?

Assaf: No, no, I'm not involved with them anymore. But I was like, yeah, I actually started Apple. Meanwhile, I was doing Turno at the same time. You may have heard of it.

So this is where I kind of got the inspiration for a marketplace. And it's a lot of power in that, because it's not just screens. It's that you'd actually connect to people who can do things in the real world. Right? That's really powerful.

Jeremy: I love that. And that is what I personally do love, especially, I would say, during Covid back in 2020. For me, I initially started a boat rental business, and then through that largely grew out an Airbnb portfolio. But that's what was cool to me, was like, wow, this is real world stuff. These are real experiences. Ultimately, that's what I was in the business of, creating real world experiences and making stuff happen.

So to me, tech enabled or tech products that make stuff happen in the real world are cool. Sure, Zapier is cool. It makes, you know, automate data workflow. You get an email and then that email might make your Alexa go off or something. That's cool. But what you're doing is you're actually connecting people, ultimately, which is really, really neat. And definitely I had a very unique use case, one that is very valuable to me personally. So kudos. And I applaud you for that.

So back to my second question, which was, I know before I said I have two questions. I asked the first one and then we went going. We weren't going for a while. But my second question is, now you're a cleaner. So you're the host, now you're the cleaner. Why do you use Turno? What's in it for you?

Assaf: Okay, so if you're a cleaner, you go to Turno, say I'm a cleaner, you sign up, you can invite the people that you're working with right now to collaborate. Right? So it could be that the cleaner that you work with invites you and says, hey, Jeremy, I'm using Turno to schedule my cleans. And if you use Turno as well, then all your projects would just flow to me automatically. We don't have to do this song and dance of you letting me know when I have to go, and sharing an Excel sheet with me, whatever.

So we have a lot of cleaners that sign up, they invite their customers, and then they just get the projects flowing into them. They're able to deliver a really great service experience. And what we also let them do is add more customers to their book of business, right? Let's say that you're a cleaner in some resort area, you list yourself on Turno, like, hey, I have a cleaning business, and these are my rates for these property sizes. And then as they get booked more and more and get consistent five-star reviews, they get to kind of dominate the search results, right? So if you think of an Airbnb listing that is dominating the search results in their area because they have really good favorable guest reviews, they're gonna build a great business off of it.

Jeremy: Yeah, and then for whatever, I don't need to get into ranting about Airbnb SEO, or, oh, the listing goes bye-bye for a little bit here or there. But okay, so being good and getting good reviews rewards you, which is great. That's amazing.

Assaf: And then they're also able to kind of charge slightly higher prices, right? If you see, hey, listen, I've done a thousand projects, I have 25 awesome reviews, I'm consistent, I'm reliable, and the data shows it. So I can charge a little more, and that's okay. Versus someone who is like, hey, I haven't done anything yet. Take a chance with me, right? So they can come in a little lower.

Jeremy: One, I guess this isn't a complaint, this is constructive feedback, or just, you know, [inaudible], as an actual user. Again, guys, I disclaim, I have people on here whose products I actually, frankly, use.

So sometimes what I see is that, let's say I have a house that's like, we do things to make our cleanings as easy as possible. For example, we have two washers and dryers in our big houses. The reason we do that is because we know that essentially, when you have a big property, or even any property, the thing that's gonna take the most time is drying the linens. So we have two washers and dryers, but the cleaners don't know that when you put out a request. So let's say they see a seven bedroom house. They're gonna say, I mean, I don't blame them, if I saw a seven bedroom house, I'd be like $400, $350, when actually it's gonna take them half as long as they thought it was gonna take. So yeah, I guess, is that something you've heard before, when you just are only able to put in the bedrooms, bathrooms?

Assaf: So it's not the end, right? If someone bids, let's say $400, which I think for a seven bedroom, it's decent, but let's say someone bids $400, and you can still message them and be like, hey, I saw your bid. I understand why you think that makes sense, but I actually have an extra set of washer dryers. So you're gonna have to spend less time there waiting for the laundry. Would you mind lowering your bid a little bit? And then they have an option to do it, right? We can't capture everything perfectly. So we still give people the opportunity to communicate.

Jeremy: Okay, that makes sense. So essentially, and admittedly at this point, I have my team do the turnover requests. So they just send me, maybe this is, they send me screenshots of the things and I'm like, go with this person, or go with this one. So now I gotta be like, all right, let's see if there's a little bit of wiggle room.

Because guys, your cleaning margins are super poor. I mean, first of all, you need cleaners to do a good job, because when they do a great job and you get five-star reviews, that ultimately leads to more revenue. But there's definitely, you can't have it be so high, the cleaning costs, that it kills your margins. So essentially what you're saying is there's wiggle, you can negotiate through the platform.

Assaf: Sometimes there's wiggle room, but I'll tell you this much. Turno is the one place where you can get probably the lowest sustainable prices. So there's low...

Jeremy: Sustainable, what's sustainability?

Assaf: For example, you know that when you go to Costco, whatever you see there is the cheapest you're ever gonna find it on a sustainable level, right? Like you might be able to find a store here and there that is going out of business, maybe.

Jeremy: A discount last minute or something.

Assaf: But when you go to Costco, you know that the price they're giving you is a good price. They're making a little bit of money, but this is a good price. And the same thing with Turno. Like the cleaners, they're bidding against everyone else in their area, right? So this is the lowest they'll bid, you know, they'll go, but they're still willing to get out of the house for that.

Jeremy: Got it. Okay, so we have a capitalistic situation going on. So you've applied capitalism to short-term rental cleaning. I guess, what are some success stories you got where someone, I don't know, is there a number of properties, or just, yeah, how has this helped people?

Assaf: Okay, I love that question. I was just looking the other day, looking through our database. I'm a big data guy. I look at our database, I do all kinds of queries and stuff like that. I was like, oh, let's do it.

Jeremy: Did you check me out before? Do you go in and, oh, let's check out Jeremy, see what he's doing. I think I have a couple of accounts, honestly.

Assaf: Let's look at kind of the top grossing cleaners and just see kind of the scale of it. I was like, let's see all the cleaners that have made it over $200,000. And it was a very, very long list of cleaners in there.

Jeremy: $200,000?

Assaf: Yeah, and there's one that is like almost at a million dollars.

Jeremy: Whoa. I would assume they get the job, but then they make sure that the people who, at that point, I'm assuming you're subcontracting, or I would hope, honestly.

Assaf: Otherwise, they manage usually small teams of cleaners. But they've built a reputation on Turno. Like I said, you see their bid coming up top of the page because they have done thousands of projects. They have hundreds of positive reviews. And they're able to charge a little more because of the confidence they give you.

Jeremy: And they're probably in an urban environment where there's a lot of volume going through.

Assaf: Yeah, so we've made a lot of people a lot of money.

Jeremy: And I think that makes you really happy.

Assaf: Yeah, no, that's what we're here for. Let's empower people.

Jeremy: And so those people, would you consider, I mean, would you consider them, in a way, they're kind of like your, I mean, they're contractors for you, technically. You said you deal with 1099s earlier, which in a way makes, they're not my contractor, technically, in the eyes of capitalism and the IRS. Technically, they're your contractors. So do you feel like kind of these folks, the cleaners, are in a way like your employees, and you are empowering them?

Assaf: They're not my employees.

Jeremy: Well, they're your contractor.

Assaf: Right, in the same way that you are not an Airbnb employee. Right?

Jeremy: True.

Assaf: You have a business that you run, and you list your property on Airbnb, and you raise and lower your prices, and you work on your reviews and improving it. Airbnb provides the arena, and you play in it. In the same way, we build an arena, and people play in it. And they hire other people, or they work alone. They raise their prices, they lower their prices. They don't have to do anything they don't want to do. So they're absolutely not our employees.

Jeremy: Got it. Well, my whole point was, do you feel like your mission at Turno is part, empowering these cleaners who I don't even know how they got customers prior to you. I mean, maybe they show up on Google or word of mouth. I guess, beyond having a successful company, what gets you excited when you wake up and go to work?

Assaf: That gets me excited. Just knowing that there's just all these families where the primary way they pay their bills is working on Turno projects. It's just mind blowing to feel that you're making a lot of lives possible through this platform. So that really provides me with a lot of energy.

But also on the host side, right? I think a lot of entrepreneurs are building their businesses based not just on Turno, but a lot of other kind of tech stack blocks. But we're helping them run a side business or a main business, and empower them to grow. A lot of our customers start with one property and then they realize, man, this is not that hard if I just do it right. If I automate things the right way and I use the right platforms, I can add another property. I can add another property. And then you keep going, you don't stop. You keep getting addicted to it. And next thing you know, you're at 25 and it's all right.

Jeremy: Well, at a certain point you hit a certain number where you're like, it's even beyond softwares at this point. Turno, property management softwares, pricing softwares. But at a certain point it's like, oh, I don't need to hire cleaners. I need to hire team members myself that are the ones who help communicate with the cleaners.

So I guess, yeah, so you have a cleaner who's made a million dollars, or cleaning service.

Assaf: Yeah. Close to a million.

Jeremy: I mean, do you have a stat of like a host who has like 197 properties, or you can share there?

Assaf: Yeah, I've worked with a lot of, ever since 2017, 2016, with people who started with a handful. And now I look at their account every now and then, there's like 200 properties in there. And it's just incredible. And I've met some of them in person, when you go to conferences and things, and they're telling me, I couldn't have done this without you, without Turno. This would have been impossible to do otherwise. And that just gives you like, oh man, this feels good, right? This feels good to be able to help people build a dream. I mean, real estate is the American dream, owning properties, like playing Monopoly.

Jeremy: As we sit here in our respective cities with buildings in the background.

Assaf: Yeah.

Jeremy: So, real estate's the dream, but yeah, what else? What can we be on the lookout for from you moving forward? And what excites you?

Assaf: So we want to, when you're running a platform, you need to make sure that everyone is happy on both ends. So we have a lot of cool features coming that make cleaner's life easier. We have some that make host life easier. Our kind of general goal is to help you beyond cleaning, with maintenance and other services that you need to run your properties, to the point where you can buy a property, go on BNBCalc, find the best performing property anywhere in the country, buy it, and just get all the services you need through Turno to operate it.

Jeremy: Okay, and so what is your guys' pricing model? What's the pricing? And how many, is there, you know, you need to have X number of listings or something like that?

Assaf: Sure. So in order to use our software with your existing team, let's say they already work with a cleaning company, already work with individual cleaners, then if you have just one property, it's completely free, no charge. If you have more than one property, then it is $8 a month, or $6 a month annually. We connect with all the property management software out there. I would connect with Airbnb, with VRBO, with everyone.

Now, if you want to find a cleaner through Turno, then you don't have to pay any subscription fees. You go, you search for a cleaner, you find them, and then there is a transaction fee. It's 5%. We deliberately have like a very low markup. We want to be the Costco of things, where you know you get a really good price consistently and get really good value. So really just 5% on top of the cleaning cost. And then you get all the features in the software included in that. So it's automatic scheduling, automatic payments, checklist, photos, chat, problem reporting, 1099s, so it's all included in that price. So for example, if you find someone and it's a $50 project, then we would charge you $52.50 for that project.

Jeremy: Yeah, I believe, I think you guys accept credit card too.

Assaf: If I have to. We do ACH.

Jeremy: Which is less expensive than a credit card.

Assaf: ACH is less expensive than, and that's the 5%. If you want to use a credit card, as a convenience fee, that's like a little...

Jeremy: Got it. Okay, so just add the convenience fee. It's not a different fee or a...

Assaf: Yeah, 5%, 5%.

Jeremy: Okay, cool. So folks, they just come in, they can just plug in their PMS system, select the one that they want to get bids for. And it's really kind of like that simple to get started with you.

Assaf: Yeah, it's that simple. And if you're managing multiple properties and you're using one of the following PMSs, then there's actually no software charge at all. It's already included in what you're paying your PMS. And the list of those PMSs are Hospitable...

Jeremy: Let's go. All right, that's, I didn't know this one coming in here.

Assaf: Hostfully, Guesty For Hosts, Uplisting, Journey, and I might be forgetting one.

Jeremy: I like how you said Hospitable first, because I was going to be like suspenseful for me. Like, are you going to say, because I use Hospitable. And I was actually with Miles, their CMO, and Assaf was also in Nashville, but I went over to his booth because we have this podcast coming up, to say hi. And he wasn't there. He was running around. I mean, as was I, pretty much the entire time. There was a lot of people. It was a lot of fun.

And by the way, guys, I just got back from Nashville. I think actually people came up. That was like the first time since I started the podcast, actually second time. I went to STR Nation where people came up to me and said they'd been listening, which was really, really cool. So having that STR wealth and I asked folk, I was like, what do you like? What do you not like about the podcast? Tried to get as much feedback. And anyone listening, give me feedback. Send me an Instagram DM, LinkedIn, wherever you find me. Because I want to make this fun and informative.

And what I heard from people was that I keep it real. I don't try to sugarcoat things. And I talk about the, I don't wanna say negative, but the less glorifying aspects of this game. And yeah, one of those is making sure your cleaners are good. Frankly, that is one of the things that's important. Like if they're not sending you pictures, I mean, at the bare minimum, and it's hard sometimes to convince them to even send you pictures. It seems like, Assaf, it seems like if they use Turno, it's just a given. In order to submit the cleaning, they have to submit photos.

Assaf: So here's a cool thing. So let's say that you already have cleaners, but it's harder for you to get compliance in terms of the things you want them to do. Bring them to Turno and set up your payments so that you pay them through Turno. Now, in order to complete a project, there's all these prerequisites, like upload these pictures, track this inventory. So...

Jeremy: So you have to. There's no, there's no choice. You can't just...

Assaf: It's urgent. There's no [inaudible], you need to follow these steps. So there's nothing like payments to incentivize people to do what they need to do.

Jeremy: Gotcha. The fact that you guys are already baked in the Hospitable, that's amazing. That is so, I don't know, I'm sure that was kind of a cool negotiation on your end in order to get onto the PMSs. Not only because you're a partner on the PMSs and you're synced. Like if you go to the API connections through Hospitable, you're there. But I wasn't even aware that, I guess, is that kind of something you're working on, is partnering with a bunch of PMSs so make it as frictionless as possible for the end user?

Assaf: Yeah, so the two products are bundled. So when you're using Hospitable, you get free access to Turno. I love all my PMS partners.

Jeremy: That's awesome, guys. That's as though being, you're on the channels because they're called channel managers too. So, awesome.

So what is your, the last question I like to ask is, what is your pro tip for those listening to succeed in this game in 2024?

Assaf: So I just heard a great pro tip from you, which is to have two sets of...

Jeremy: Well, how are we going to influence that? But where are your properties too? Just quickly, yeah, well, I mean, I know you have awesome software, but yeah, tell us what's your portfolio like as well.

Assaf: I've had a little bit of regulation issue. And so right now I'm not actively hosting. But pro tip is bonuses. So I would say whenever you get a five-star review, especially a cleaning review, bonus your cleaner $20. I don't know how big your property is and what your budget is, but $20, $25, $50 to make sure that people are incentivized to really go the extra mile. Big believer in incentives. And I think this is a great way to keep everyone hustling. So bonuses.

Jeremy: I agree, that's a really good one. And yeah, kind of go back on the point with those two washer dryers, you want to make your cleaner's lives easy for them. Because yeah, if your property takes too long, or maybe they have to bring their vacuum or something, they don't, they're going to charge you a higher rate. Or if they have enough customers, they might just say, hey, sorry, this isn't working out for us anymore.

So when you find a good cleaner, you should ask them, hey, is there anything I can do to make things easier for you? And what that might lead to is quicker turnaround. So you can have earlier check-in or later checkout. So my point was two washers and dryers. Don't be like, yes, that might be in a way for you. But really, making your cleaners' lives easy only helps you. So I don't know if you agree or disagree there.

Assaf: Absolutely. This is a really great tip.

Jeremy: Cool. So where can folks, if they want to also follow your entrepreneurial journey, where can they follow you, connect with you?

Assaf: You can find me on LinkedIn. And you can just connect with me and we can chat. I'm not such a big deal. I still have enough time in the day to talk to everyone. And then we have a special offer to the listeners of this podcast. So if you go to turno.com slash str pros, you can get a special discount on your first cleaning projects with Turno.

Jeremy: Got it. You guys heard it here. So it is turno.com backslash str pros.

Assaf: Exactly.

Jeremy: Beautiful. Put that link in right now. Get going. Add your properties. If you are on one of the PMSs that he mentioned, there's literally no reason not to. You only have something to gain. And it's apparently at no cost at all. So get your cleaners onto there. ASAP, Rocky.

Assaf, thank you so much for coming today.

Assaf: Absolutely, Jeremy. I have a feeling we'll be talking again soon.

Jeremy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is the start. I'm sad we didn't meet in person, but this is the next best thing. And I hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast.